


Panic Attack

by TTMIYH



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: Rapid heartbeat pounding through my chestAgitated body in distressI feel like I'm in dangerDaily life is strangled by my stressA stifling surge shooting through all my veinsExtreme apprehension, suddenly I'm insaneLost all hope for redemptionA grave situation desperate at best
Relationships: Aradia Megido/Sollux Captor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Panic Attack

Grinding, squealing, gnashing, the sounds of brain-in-head echoing around, dirty thoughts compressed into a thin pinball shaking through a china shop with all the velocity of a bullet, bouncing off bumpers, demolishing memory-china. The sphere of insensate information induced intervallic internal intimidation, intellectual inner-industries involuntarily interred, injured impressions, imploded imagery and imagination in inimitable immensities. The feeling, that of having a pinball in your head, was distinctly unpleasant, but even worse was the feeling of all your blood rushing to your torso in order to protect it from harm, removing valuable warmth from your extremities, the way your body did when it thought you were in danger. Your heart pumping so hard that it felt like it was lodging itself in your lungs, making breathing an impossibility.

There was a method to this madness, of course, a defective brain producing the wrong chemicals in the wrong amounts, a wire crossed here and there, a traumatic incident every now and again, the usual. When you're exposed to what feels like life threatening danger all the time, inevitably, your body stops leaving the defensive mode, and sometimes, it boils over, saltwater making the gas flame flare up, hissing and sizzling like popcorn threatening to burst between Sollux's ears.

A loose t-shirt hung on his body, a blanket of cloth over skeletal Pieta, the languished doomscrolling laptop replacing Christ himself. Boxers were there too, to preserve modesty if any stalker were to stake their claim on Sollux's dying apartment. All throughout the carpeted floor, bags of ex-food, abandoned drink cups drained of liquid like a vampire's meal, plastic and paper. A fitted sheet, a heated blanket, a weighted blanket, a comforter, and a blanket, every single one making an excellent combined tower for Sollux to lounge on top of, only barely feeling the warmth, the weight turning it into a discomfort to sit upon. His bladder was full, but getting up was a heartache and a headache.

His body shook and shivered despite the clammy, humid temperature of his domicile, the roaring heat at which his servers ran at despite their complex water cooling, the array of fans pulling hot air away from them, directly into Sollux. Occasionally, a gust or curl of wind made it past his glasses, irritating his eye, making it water, because Sollux was not a guy who cried, he merely shook, and rocked, and twitched, as his heart beat out of its chest. It was so wild, the way he felt like he just wasn't there, completely invisible inside himself, an infinite jukebox in his head screaming screeching and wailing "I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die" repeat x∞ until he threw up or went to sleep or something else (but not that, never, never that).

There was a door that opened in the front of the studio apartment until it was open and then it was closed and a shape figured her way through the murk of the kitchenette and the swirling dark rainbow light that he only kept because so many people told him he'd burn his eyes out staring at a bright computer screen on his dark bed in his dark room all the time with his dark self so he got a big dim light that filled his room with rainbows and told them to fuck off. Her shadow was traced against the wall as she stepped onto the bed, her second set of keys jingling. Second of Sollux's keys, not a second set of her-- You know what? The copy of Sollux's keys that she had. That's what. There. Explained.

She shushed him, quietly, when he made a noise, and pulled his laptop off his lap until he wasn't looking quite so renaissant and could be laid back upon some pillows and she said something like "You pulled an all-nighter again." And it wasn't a question so he didn't answer yes or no but she knew anyway. Because she was his girlfriend, and she was very smart, and she knew Sollux.

She re-organized the blankets in the order that he liked them while he shook beneath the growing stack. First, the weighted blanket, letting its deep, dry-rice-filled pockets encapsulate him, and then the heated, electric blanket, to warm through the weighted blanket, and then the comforter, to wrap him up, and then taking the normal blanket and pulling off his glasses and wrapping it around his face so that she could gently bonk him into the pillows. Her laughter, concerned as it was, was filled with gloomy gothic moonshine, her hands pressed to his face.

She didn't get under the blankets with him, but she didn't need to. She sat on the edge of the bed and then stepped up and began tidying the place up. Not taking any of the trash out yet but at least getting it all into bags, because he liked taking the bags out, and it made him feel like he was doing something with himself. And then when she was done she sat back on the edge of the bed, and pulled herself down, and turned away from Sollux, and pressed her back to his back through the many necessary layers of fabric like lovers in a post-apocalyptic hazmat brothel.

The only thing that needed to touch him was her hair.


End file.
